Introduction To Microsoft Teams

Many organizations are turning to Microsoft Teams as a messaging app for the workplace, and for good reason. Microsoft Teams is a tool that emphasizes communication, real-time collaboration, app and file sharing, and meetings. This tool is a great way to keep everyone in the workplace on the same page at all times. If you don’t know much about Microsoft Teams, here is some information about this tool.

What is Microsoft Teams?

Microsoft Teams is a product created by Microsoft for business chat-based communication. This platform is comparable to Slack, HipChat, and other competitors. The essence of Microsoft Teams is that it allows users to set up Teams. Each Team serves as a hub for chat rooms, which are referred to as channels.

It is possible to house numerous channels in the same Team. Typically, each channel is dedicated to a different topic to ensure chats remain easy to follow. Conversations in a Team are threaded and flow from the top to the bottom. If there are updates to a conversation, the users who are a part of the channel are notified. If a face-to-face conversation is necessary, a user can jump into a Skype video or voice chat with other users in the channel at the click of a button.

Microsoft is advertising Microsoft Teams as more than just a platform for chatting. A major advantage of this product is that it is integrated with Office 365, which is Microsoft’s online office suite. Therefore, Microsoft Teams is integrated with not just Word and Excel, but also SharePoint and other cloud storage and sharing services. Delve, PowerPoint, OneNote, Power BI, and Planner are just a few other examples of the services integrated with Teams.

The reason this is so advantageous is that any documents, presentations, and spreadsheets that are shared within a Team are automatically synced and stored in OneDrive, which is Microsoft’s cloud storage. This makes sure that every user in a Team has access to the latest copy of the document. Collaborative editing on the content shared is also possible. Every time a user makes a change, this automatically reflected in real time for the other users.

Even if some of your employees don’t like to use Microsoft Teams, they can still be kept in the loop due to the integration with Office 365. Any important content or updates made within Microsoft Teams will be accessible outside of the platform.

If necessary, you can use Connectors so that team channels can communicate and interact with services outside of Microsoft Office 365. There are currently Connectors for services like SAP Success Factors, Salesforce, GitHub, Zendesk, MailChimp, and Evernote. If there is not a Connector available for the outside service you want to connect to, you can use the API framework to build one. This API framework is particularly helpful if you want to link Microsoft Teams to your own internal apps.

When Microsoft Teams launched, there were more than 70 Connectors and 85 Bots. Bots are able to participate in the conversations within a channel. Every channel in a Team has access to a T-Bot, which is a bot that will answer users’ questions about Microsoft Team. The virtual assistant Cortana is also being integrated into Microsoft Teams. This integration will allow your employees to use IP phones and conference room microphones to issue commands to Cortana.

Office 365 Groups and SharePoint controls access to the dashboard, files, and internal sites. Users are able to make new Groups. It is also possible to connect a Team to a Group that already exists when making the Team.

In terms of security and data protection, you have nothing to worry about when it comes to Microsoft Teams. This platform meets the same standards as Office 365 and is Tier C compliant. This platform uses two-factor authentication. Data is encrypted at rest and in transit.

How Can I Get Microsoft Teams?

If you want to use Microsoft Teams, all you need to do is navigate to the Office 365 admin center and enable it.

As you can see, there are many reasons why organizations are jumping on the Microsoft Teams bandwagon. For more information about the advantages of Microsoft Teams for your organization, don’t hesitate to contact us.